Transnational companies and the «new» industrial relations. A vehicle to re-think the regulatory boundaries of the nation-state

Abstract

Transnational companies (TNCs) have been labelled the driving forces of internationalization in the globalization debate, because they transmit the requirements for efficiency, performance and competition of the global markets to national economies. Since the early 1990s TNCs have been regarded as a core actor in any changes to industrial relations within the world of labour. Their ability to surpass national borders has turned them into a big threat for the stability of the various national arrangements that developed after the Second World War. Our intention is to revisit the relations between the actors before firms decided to break their commitments and internationalize their productive basis and decision-making structure. In particular, we refer to the efforts and initiatives which have been set in motion at a transnational level in recent decades to gain some democratic control over the activity of TNCs’ in the European Union. We have developed a conceptual framework which analyses TNCs as political power arenas at the micro and meso level.